Rare Triassic fossil unearthed near Tucumcari

Courtesy photo Axel Hungerbuehler, Mesalands Community Collegeâ€™s Dinosaur Museum curator, contrasts the rare hip bone with a museum exhibit of an early dinosaur, the coelophysis.

By Thomas Garcia: Freedom New Mexico

TUCUMCARI — Studies of a fossil collected last June in Quay County indicate that it’s a hip bone of an unidentified Triassic period creature that walked what is now New Mexico some 200 million years ago.